Bananas and Tea
by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: Doctor Who ficlets and drabbles. Chapter One: what if End of Time had gone a little differently. Chapter Two: For the first nineteen years of her life Rose Tyler knew there was a difference she couldn’t put her finger on.
1. Maybe I Should

**Title**: Maybe I Should

**Author:** TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel

**Setting: **Series One of New Who. Spoilers for _End of Time._

**Author note: **_During EoT, the Master kept taunting the Doctor and daring him to shoot him. But for all his taunting, you know the Master didn't actually expect the Doctor to do it._

* * *

The Master slowly sank to the floor, looking disbelievingly at the hole where a bullet had just gone through his left heart.  
"You shot me!" he said incredulously and indignantly, shocked and angry and underneath it all rather _hurt_. The Doctor wasn't supposed to do this.  
"Maybe I should have a long time ago," the Doctor said, his gaze solemn, his eyes dark.

And the Master has something like regret on his face as with his darkening vision he watches the Doctor turn and walk away from him.  
The Doctor will have time to think about that later.  
He stands and looks across at Lord Rassilon and the other Time Lords, steadfastly not looking at the woman in the pose of a Weeping Angel standing behind the Lord President.  
"I just shot my best enemy. What's to stop me doing as much to you?"


	2. Never Lonely

**Title**: Never Lonely

**Author:** TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel

**Setting: **Series One of New Who.

**Author note: **_This ficlet was written for _wmr,_ who was runner-up bidder for me in the 2010 April author auction._

_The prompt was 'Nine and Rose,' and 'lonely.'_

* * *

For the first nineteen years of her life Rose Tyler knew there was a difference she couldn't put her finger on, between her and everyone else.

She got up and lived and ate and slept, like everyone else, and went shopping and watched telly and worked all day, coming home in the evening and preparing to do it all again the next day.

Rose lived like everyone else she knew; first came school, then a job, and sometimes a boyfriend. It was nice, but there was … Then her friends started talking about settling down, maybe popping out a couple of kids, and Rose Tyler thought,

_We're nineteen. This is the rest of our life?_

No one else saw the absurdity of it, or seemed to feel the charged, painful absence of _something_, that she knew, deep in her heart and her bones, was as vital to life as oxygen or water.

And then she met the Doctor, and she found out what the difference was.

With him, life was great and magnificent and terrible, full of impossibly joys and crushing sorrows, and all dreams were either wings or swords. Nothing was so precious or extraordinary as a human life, so special as a single ordinary person, as capable of amazing things.

Death stalked them, ever-ceaseless, but life bloomed in their step, and through his eyes Rose saw everything in shades of starlight.

The Doctor was broken and bruised, left shattered in tragic impossibility's wake, the universe left unrecognisable through a torn and twisted lens.

Everywhere he went, the same old story, greed and cruelty and destruction, and someone always had to die to end it and it was never ever him. He walked in ashes and left tragedy on his path, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, and nothing he passed by was left untouched. His world was different shades of grey beneath the shadow of its ruined legacy, and he wondered why he did not end it all for good.

Then he met Rose, and once more the world was filled with wonders.

With her there was always hope, and always good, somewhere beneath the pettiness and indifference. There could be regret and sorrow in the heart of a Dalek, and bravery in the worst of odds. There was always a chance at redemption, and a day where just once, everybody lives.

Her belief and strength and love of life gave him the same, and through her eyes, the Doctor saw everything as bright and glorious as sunlight.

And they never truly felt alone, when wandering hand-in-hand with someone who brought that existence with them.


End file.
